This month I’m Indie-publishing the first of two romantic comedy short stories in a five-part series called LOVE & OTHER CALAMITIES. The series follows a group of friends in a fictional Seattle suburb called Rosewood. The series starts with the bachelorette party in Deceiving Derek and will end with the wedding of one of the secondary characters from the first story.
Deceiving Derek has been previously published (whereas the remaining four stories in the series will be Indie originals), and so I’ve taken the opportunity to update it technology-wise and also revise it both to reflect changes in my writing style and also because the hero, Derek McAllister, is a police detective and I wanted to make sure I nailed his character to the best of my ability. I had a great research resource in the form of a writer I’ve critiqued with over the years, but because geography can make a difference I also took the opportunity to pick the brains of a resource in Lynwood (near Seattle) and most especially a very helpful detective with the Edmonds Police Department, also near Seattle. All three resources were invaluable, and of course any errors or, ahem, fictional liberties are my own.
Deceiving Derek first appeared on the website of the first publisher of HEAD OVER HEELS. Later, before epublishing took off, I sold the story to another small epublisher, who sold maybe 11 copies from their website over a period of seven months. The Kindle was getting introduced just when that small epublisher went under. I began to wonder if this story was cursed.
Then I was offered another contract to publish the story—from a traditional epublisher that is still around and has published a lot of books. I decided not to accept that offer, because I wanted to retain audio rights to the story and the publisher, while they did not have plans to release the story in audio at the time, wanted to contract those rights for the possible future. And so I declined, and the story sat on my hard drive.
Will it ever release in audio? What inspired me to take this story and develop it into a series? You’ll have to stay tuned to this blog!
For now, Deceiving Derek will see life again as an ebook, and once I’m finished writing the series, perhaps also in a print anthology (depending on the eventual length of the series). I’m very excited to get it out there again, especially in its new incarnation. But I need to learn formatting first, so the release date is still a couple of weeks off.
In the meantime…drum roll…I love this cover designed by the talented Dara England of LFD Designs for Authors. It totally captures the romantic comedy mood with some winky-winky flair.
What do you think?
